Midsummer

2001
Colour photo print
180 x 125 cm

Midsummer

Group celebrations are among the basic endeavours of our species – just like the fundamental struggle to live in communities, or secure food and shelter. The eccentric partying that goes with the Midsummer Festival, a celebration of a physical phenomenon – Summer Solstice – which accounts for a sleepless night, is a well-rehearsed routine up north.

On St. John’s the sun won’t go down at night. Since the dawn of time, the drinking and shouting has been part of a tradition still upheld, which despite its religious-sounding name is of pagan origin. In Mäkipää’s Midsummer (subtitled Act vs. Plan), the party has reached its peak, and the patrons start going out of control. Hypnotised by the fire and sun, drunk from the wine and vodka, and prone to orgy – as if in response to the sun’s restlessness – they follow their innate drive to procreate the next generation of Nordic Barbarians. There is no darkness swallowing the shady corners of life; what was deemed secret creeps out into the open, feelings and experiences surface. Just like Tea Mäkipää’s Finnish origins. No time to sleep. It remains open to speculation whether the camera, were it to dwell, would catch moments of boredom, lament, or violence.

We are shown the unfiltered, undistorted collision of Pagan folk and Christian tradition grafting its own significance on the event – as it did with Christmas, originally the celebration of the darkest day of the year – and the questionable logic of a consumerist and progress-crazed spiral striving for an ever more comfortable life, making dystopia become more real than ever.